


Era's End

by a tattered rose (atr)



Category: Jurassic Park (1993)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 16:17:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atr/pseuds/a%20tattered%20rose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An era has ended, long live an era.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Era's End

**Author's Note:**

  * For [random_chick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/random_chick/gifts).



He'd never been much of a drinker, and that must have been his error. Like technology, it was supposed to be useful, and the first drink had been. A gentle fuzz and buzz, loose brush of dust obscuring a familiar outline. But, like technology, he'd been better off with what he knew, ensconced in his lab surrounded by the backlog of cataloguing, crates of carefully packed fossils and stacks of slightly (only slightly) less careful notes on what was inside. But her handwriting was everywhere, every tooth and claw a dual memory, a triple memory of Montana days, living, breathing, salivating mouths, and nights with Ellie.

 

Now he couldn't focus, couldn't concentrate, his mind a stream of moments draining his energy faster than he was draining bottles.

 

The memory of Ellie, rolling over in bed to look at him, weeks after they got home, still a little awkward with her sprained leg. "I got an offer today. An endorsement deal."

 

"Is that right?" It had been so funny, that word a running joke, a fixture in every interview they'd given. "Something a bit smaller this time?"

 

"Boots." She'd giggled into his neck, pulled the comforter higher even with the warmth of the room. "Work boots. They want to expand their women's market, and they said since I've worn mine through battles with dead dinosaurs and living dinosaurs..."

 

"They're going after the best." And they'd gotten it, her, every month she still turned up in his mailbox, wearing clothes she'd never have worn on a dig but the same lightning in her eyes, the same cheeky grin somewhere between academic whiplash and an invitation to follow her home.

 

"You should do it." Playful exhilaration left over from the familiar high of exploration and the unfamiliar high of not dying. Not quite missing the way her smile faltered.

 

"There's something else."

  
"Please don't tell me they got their hands on authentic props."

 

"It's not that." The weight of her hand on his chest rock sinking through flesh. "A teaching position. Guest lecturer, just for a year, but it's a great opportunity-"

 

"Hey." Every single vertebrae ran past his fingertips, he counted them off until hair tangled around his fingertips. "That's great. You can't be my postdoc forever. And you've always had a way with the students. We'll just-"

 

"-In London." Her head, pulling back to look at him, tearing off sandy strands that would stay for weeks, months. "I need to leave next week, start setting up my lab-"

 

It was only a flight away, if they wanted, if they still wanted to- "I can take a year off. I am, taking the year off. I can write anywhere and our work will keep until this all dies down."

 

It would never die out, living, breathing dinosaurs would never disappear, never for people who had devoted their lives to molecules of memory, impressions in ancient peat and sedimentary layers. But they were diggers, and millenia of history would forever be richer than five, ten, a dozen years of Disneyland recreation.

 

"I want to go alone."

 

"That's fine, but..." he didn't know how to say it. Not when what had always made it so easy with Ellie was that she always got there first, always parsed out exactly what he was thinking and feeling and told him and moved on to the next mystery, letting him catch up. Not when he'd finally caught up, and she was somewhere else entirely.

 

"At least for this term."

 

"I just thought, if you wanted to try for a kid..."

 

Something, there, a dimming and a lighting, an eternity of yes before the no of her hand sliding over his ear and lips catching onto his. "I do. Someday. But not right now."

 

And now, that seemed a very good idea. What would he say to a child? Go eat your peas? He didn't even know how to cook peas, not even whether they came in a bag or a can; vegetables were something Ellie took care of.

 

So he'd taken her to the airport, given a couple grad students (with her blessing) a slight promotion over the back log. Greg and Theresa had been at the dig, at this point they were likely the most qualified of them all, having finished the extraction of the raptor all on their own.

 

Not that life without her, Ellie, had been easy. Or particularly hard. Postdocs came and went, women came and went, though less frequently, and anyway, Ellie wasn't gone. Not then, not yet. The University had already given him a year's sabbatical to write up his adventures and though his time on the island had been fast and often blurry, there was still more than enough to pin down, shuffle into established understanding and invite speculation worth a dozen theses.

 

Especially the raptors.

 

And Ellie had called every week, often before he knew a week had passed she'd be on the line, asking about his latest chapter, offering suggestions or challenging an idea. There was never much about what she was doing, her classes fine, her students wonderful, and memories of her interacting with his own students were too recent for it not to seem natural. Rational. Logical. Though he missed it now, slumped over his desk wondering if what she looked like at the head of a class was substantially different than what she looked like merely at the head of his.

 

He'd offered to fly out for Thanksgiving, but she'd cited a country that couldn't care less, and a folder of papers and tests to be graded that had her tearing out her hair.

 

He had work too. It hadn't mattered.

 

Then Christmas, when she'd flown home and for two weeks everything was so normal, so familiar that most if it was spent in lab with crowbars and databases than anything else. He'd meant to ask, he really had, but she'd started on raptor communication first and then it was time for her to leave.

 

He'd thought he might be ready. In one of those infatuations that last through innumerable sleeps, so big that a nighttime fancy can only encompass a part. An argument with so many little supports you forget the big against. A "yes" so big you've forgotten it was ever a "no."

 

She'd left before he could say yes. She'd returned before he could say anything at all. Spring break that was only spring because the world was green outside his door and she was on his stoop, telling him this was so. Telling him some dinosaurs did become birds and raptors could communicate and she'd always love him but there was someone else and so there wasn't a _them_ , anymore.

 

He'd never wanted kids. He'd never needed more.

 

But once she'd left again it had all felt so unfinished, so quiet, so much like he'd missed questions between them and left it all gone unsaid.

 

He took a drink. And another. Celebratory vodka gone, then the whisky, then he forgot to look.

 

He'd never been much of a drinker, but once he started it was hard to stop. There was no one to stop him.

 

Until. There was a letter. Only a name, no address, no postage, Theresa slapping it against his chest and departing like he had no control over her future.

 

"Dr. Alan Grant"

 

Obvious enough.

 

"They want to see you." And the handwriting was her handwriting and he missed it. "Buy them some ice cream. PS: ask them about the raptors BUT BE NI CE."

 

That was it. That and a plane ticket. It took a minute. A few minutes. Before he put it together. Tim and Lex. He hadn't seen them since the last helicopter, their parents putting aside all issues for however long it took to promise their children that it would all be okay.

 

Parents who, Ellie had told him, had finished getting their divorce.

 

He remembered a letter from Timmy, mostly crayon speculation not fit for an undergrad. But then, he was hardly nine.

 

He remembered a letter from Lex, he hadn't had anything to say.

 

But he knew, he'd known for months, Ellie wasn't coming back. And he'd never wanted kids. Until he'd thought maybe he did. Want them. With Ellie, who was gone. Wanted Tim, who wasn't his. Lex, who was a little too much like Ellie already. Kids who'd saved themselves more than he'd ever managed to save them.

 

He wanted to call Ellie.

 

He wanted to see Tim and Lex.

 

He had a chapter to finish on raptors.


End file.
